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PLoS Launches Open Access Biology Journal

Posted by michael on from the if-it-squirms-it's-biology dept.

Vojtek writes "An international grass-roots organization of scientists is lauching an open access journal, PLoS Biology, that will compete with existing publications. See PLoS.org for details. Read their FAQ, download and post their Poster, support their cause!" We've done several previous stories about these guys - this one is pretty thorough.

9 of 17 comments (clear)

  1. Very Interesting... by nycsubway · · Score: 2, Informative

    Except, where are the journals? I couldn't find either of their journals on their website. I am very interested in them however. I'm sure peices published in that journal will not be funded by large companies or groups and will probably be more theoretical, and possibly more impracticle.

    --
    http://github.com/gbook/nidb
    1. Re:Very Interesting... by VendingMenace · · Score: 4, Informative

      well there ARE no journals right now. Just like their site says, "We are accepting submissions for PLoS Biology as of May 1, 2003. The first issue is planned for October 2003."

      Yeah, there may be a trend toward companies not publishing in it, at least in the begginning. This is more due to the fact that there will not be the name regognition that goes along with more traditioinal journals. However, if the idea takes off, there is no reason why anyone would not publish non-classified material in an open journal.

  2. great idea... by VendingMenace · · Score: 2, Insightful

    hopefully it will work out. There are so many hurdles to overcome. It has to gain popularity and now deal with all this censorship brewha that has come in teh sciences post 9/11.

    Personally, i think that open journals are the way to go. It just seem rediculous that people can't learn about stuff becuase the cost is porhibitively high, but i guess that really isn't anything new. Nevertheless, it sux, and hopefull this jounal will help end this.

    SWEEET!

    1. Re:great idea... by sketerpot · · Score: 5, Informative

      A similar site is ArXiv, which does mostly physics stuff AFAIK. You can do things like searching more easily on the web, as well as the openness benefits.

    2. Re:great idea... by Muhammar · · Score: 4, Informative

      Physics people are far ahead of other fields in this - because there is not money to be made in the field.

      Chemistry journals and searchable databases are in clutches of major publishers - which solicit the free work of their referees but charge top dollars. The trouble is: the major customers are pharma companies and large universities and they can afford to pay large fees They are more interested in reliability of the online service rather than cost savings from an open project.

      "In times of universal broadband deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

      --
      I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
    3. Re:great idea... by AYEq · · Score: 3, Informative

      ArXiv is only a searchable database of preprints. (mathematics preprints is what I knew ArXiv for)

      Basically it consists of papers before they get published.

    4. Re:great idea... by bmnc · · Score: 3, Informative

      The flipside of the free accesss for readers is likely to be increased cost to authors, as people still have to be employed to find referees, make websites etc... and the money for that has to come from somewhere. I look forward to an open acess physics journal to come online. At the moment we have arxiv.org but thats not published material, its a preprint archive (and doesn't count in the ratrace).

  3. science perverted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    Physics people are far ahead of other fields in this - because there is not money to be made in the field. Chemistry journals and searchable databases are in clutches of major publishers - which solicit the free work of their referees but charge top dollars.

    It wasn't supposed to end up this way.

  4. The problem with online journals by axolotl_farmer · · Score: 4, Informative

    Finding articles has begun to become a real big problem. Cheap universities cut down on subscriptions. My place of work, the University of Stockholm, canceled all science journals at the main library this year Online periodicals are still very expensive.

    The problem with free online journals is getting an ISSN number for your journal. Without this, it is not even counted as a publication, and won't appear in any reference databases. To get an ISSN, the journal has to be printed and submitted to something like 50 libraries.

    So, to publish an online journal you still have to kill trees...